I haven’t managed to shake the hurt and anger from my visit to Flights of Fantasy over the last day or so and it’s doubtful that will happen any time soon, but I have been trying not to let that overshadow the rest of a rather pleasant and fun day.
Alice, Josh and I started the day bright and early with breakfast at Friendly’s. And after a few cups of coffee we actually started to resemble a trio of awake people. I had a very yummy Belgian waffle with fresh strawberries and ample amounts of whipped cream and Uschi spent most of her time with her nose glued to Josh’s pant leg. I’m pretty sure it was the smell of kitties that kept her attention because she was equally interested in Alice’s pants throughout the day and latched onto Jackie Kessler later in the afternoon.
Having sufficiently stuffed ourselves we piled into the car and headed off to Empire State Plaza for the second annual Empire State Book Festival. After grabbing programs for the day’s many events and headed right in to get seats for the opening keynote. Last year we had just barely managed to find enough seats to all sit together and it wasn’t long after we had plunked down that people were being forced to line up in the back of the room to stand! As we sat right up front I couldn’t really comment on how filled the room got, but there were definitely empty chairs around us. This year’s keynote was given by Ann M. Martin, of The Baby-Sistters Club fame, though she didn’t talk much about that series of books. Instead she focused on how she came to be an author and how her interests have shaped the different novels she has written over the years. She also shared several letters she has received over the years from children and they were utterly adorable and absolutely hilarious.
As none of the panels going on after the keynote were of any particular interest to me, I went off with Grace who wanted to meet Ms. Martin and get a book signed. It was while standing in line that I realized I’d misplaced my cell phone and after a harrying few moments managed to locate it in one of the ladies’ room. I managed to get back in line right before Grace went up to greet Ms. Martin and snapped a photo for her. (I have no idea what was up with my camera skills yesterday that everything was coming out a tad blurry.) That accomplished we decided to join our other friends in the panel “Insider’s Guide to Getting Published — Meet the Publishers!” On our way there Grace noted that the one huge flaw from last year — lack of available food — seemed to have been resolved as there were food vendors present by the booths. Sadly, it seemed we missed the best speaker at the panel as the ones that I heard were not only monotone and boring, but only marginally informative. The panel as a whole seemed to be stuff we were already familiar with.
Kathleen hadn’t had breakfast and jumped at the opportunity to nab some food, so we all split again and the two of us went to get her something to eat and browse through the different booths. Honestly, there weren’t nearly as many vendors set up as I recall from last year and while it did seem to be getting steadily more crowded it never achieved the crushing level that I think Gregory Maguire’s keynote provided at the first Book Festival. Anyway, I did end up buying a pretty cool shirt that says “I think therefore I read” on the front and “I read therefore I think” on the back. But after making my purchase, as Kathleen was getting her own shirt, the salesperson got very pushy. He’d asked us what we liked to read to which we both readily replied “fantasy” and then he spent the good part of ten minutes trying to force us to buy one book or another. If I hadn’t already completed my purchase, I don’t think I’d have gotten the shirt after all that. Oh, well.
We caught up with Grace and her friend, author Jason Letts, and chatted for a bit until the next set of panels began and then joined back up with Alice for “Fantasy and Real Life.” I found this panel to be an improvement over the publishers’ panel I’d joined earlier, but it was still kind of a letdown. It was focused on young adult novels (as were all the panels in this particular room), which in itself isn’t a bad thing as I read lots of YA but I think in this instance it would have benefited greatly from having that extra perspective of adult writing. Alas.
By now Alice and I were hungry so we decided to forgo the next panel and head off for food. And it’s probably good that we did because the vendors were already sold out of a lot of things — like water! I had a turkey sandwich from the Subway vendor and it was shockingly bland, but they did have chocolate chip cookies so it wasn’t a total loss. Uschi had some much desired water and much commentary was made about how incredibly well she was doing at the event. She wasn’t bothered by the people and I was happy that most everyone had been respectful of her and not been trying to distract her. Anyway, we joined up with Tara and then headed off to the makeshift bookstore that had been set up. Last year it had been so crowded in there that I could hardly move and yet somehow I spent $60 on books! This time there were maybe a dozen people milling about as we looked through the stacks and nothing really jumped out at me to purchase. I didn’t recognize nearly any of the authors whereas last year I saw many familiar names. I don’t think any of us — save Josh — bought any books this year. Sad.
But the day wasn’t a total loss because “She Blinded Me With Science Fiction” was next and nearly all of us went to it and agreed it was the best panel we’d been to all day. Authors Jackie Kessler, Michele Lang and Pamela Sargent were informative, entertaining and very personable. And it was an hour spent nattering on about sci-fi/fantasy, so it would have been hard to go wrong, even if my guide dog seemed to think it was a good time for a somewhat vocal nap. I don’t think anyone outside of my friends in my row caught it, though and I inadvertently woke her up at one point when I crossed my legs. Best of all, for me, was finally, finally, FINALLY meeting Jackie Kessler! I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve been to events that she’s attended and missed her; I was honestly starting to think she was this enigma that didn’t really exist outside of the Internet. (Which is saying something since she’s friends with several of my friends and lived relatively close to me when I was in Albany.) She was terribly sweet, immediately jumped up to give me a hug when I went up to introduce myself, and happily signed my copy of Hunger. So, yay!
Having accomplished my main goal of proving Ms. Kessler does indeed exist in the physical realm, Alice, Josh and I decided to head out for the day. We decided to see Source Code, which I still haven’t fully formed an opinion on. It was very heady science-fiction and very entertaining, but there were a few scenes that rather turned my stomach. Uschi saw fit to sleep through most of it. And then that gallon of water she had at lunch finally made itself known and I spent the last fifteen minutes of the movie convincing her to lie down quietly. Actually that was our only issue all day was that she randomly decided that she never needed to relieve. And so I’d spend twenty minutes at a time standing outside basically lunging her at the end of her leash trying to convince her to do something.
Somewhere after this we decided to go to Flights of Fantasy and had that most terrible ordeal. To soothe my wounded feelings we decided on some ice cream at Bumpy’s, which didn’t exactly make everything better but was still phenomenally good. So, all in all, it was a grand day and I just have to keep reminding myself of that.
